Thursday, January 28, 2016

The number of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally is at its lowest in more than a decade and, for the first time in years, has probably dropped below 11 million.

A new study by the Center for Migration Studies estimates that 10.9 million immigrants are living in the country without authorization. That is the lowest level since 2003 and the first time the number has dipped below 11 million since 2004.

The decline, which has been documented by previous studies as well, runs counter to the widespread image on the Republican presidential campaign trail of a rise in illegal immigration.

GOP front-runner Donald Trump has said illegal immigration rates are "beyond belief" and has claimed that immigrants bringing crime and disease are "just pouring across the border."[...]

The owners of Bröd Kitchen (formerly Hot & Crusty) on Manhattan’s Upper East Side announced a sudden and immediate shut down of the unionized bakery/restaurant. This attempt to throw the nineteen workers out of work is a clear attempt at union-busting. Join us to speak out against these greedy and callous owners who try to boost profits by destroying the rights and livelihood of workers and their families.

Dozens of union members and affiliated groups gathered outside Bröd Kitchen on the corner of West Fourth Street and Greene Street last Friday afternoon to protest alleged anti-union actions by the restaurant owners and its partners.

Protestors, some of whom were union workers from the former Hot and Crusty and now Bröd Kitchen on 63rd Street and Second Avenue, stated that their bosses were aiming to shut down their Upper East Side location in favor of the nonunionized NYU site.[...]

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

WASHINGTON -- Thousands of unaccompanied minors who came across the U.S. border as part of the migrant crisis are at risk of being deported without due process, the archbishop of Miami has warned the Obama administration.

Although the law dictates that these children must be given legal services, recent moves by the Office of Refugee Resettlement have thrown that into doubt. ORR, which is an agency under the umbrella of Health and Human Services, awarded the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants a contract to represent the children. USCRI in turn planned to subcontract with a social services firm that employed zero attorneys at the time.

"Many of these cases are time sensitive, and if they do not receive immediate attention, the affected children face imminent deportation," Archbishop Thomas Wenski warned HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell in a letter sent in October, and which The Huffington Post obtained last week. Judges in Miami have privately warned that the move could jam up the court dockets for as long as a year.[...]

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

The history of Puerto Rican migration to the U.S. shows why the fight for migrant rights must also be a struggle for racial justice.

By Lilia Fernández, NACLA Report on the AmericasJanuary 5, 2016

The third in a multi-part NACLA series on migration in the Americas – past and present. (Earlier articles in the series can be found here and here.)

Immigration activists in the United States have called for open borders as a solution to the abuses suffered by so many migrants. While there are many good reasons to support this, it’s useful to consider one example of what open-border policy and practice might look like, namely Puerto Rican labor migration to the mainland U.S. in the mid-20th century.

During and after World War II, U.S. officials encouraged and recruited Puerto Ricans to migrate to the mainland to fill agricultural and industrial jobs, particularly in areas with labor shortages. Because Puerto Ricans were assigned U.S. citizenship in the first decades of the 20th century, they bypassed the official immigration inspection to which foreign nationals were subjected. Legally speaking, they were simply domestic “American” migrants, like anyone from Tennessee, Montana, or Virginia who relocated to another state.

Puerto Rican “open border” migration occurred at the same time as the much more highly regulated migration of Mexican contract workers through the Bracero Program (1942-1964). These simultaneous migrations offer a useful comparison of open borders versus regulated or restricted migration, and the consequences of both.[...]

Monday, January 25, 2016

The owners of Bröd Kitchen (formerly Hot & Crusty) on Manhattan’s Upper East Side announced a sudden and immediate shut down of the unionized bakery/restaurant. This attempt to throw the nineteen workers out of work is a clear attempt at union-busting. Join us to speak out against these greedy and callous owners who try to boost profits by destroying the rights and livelihood of workers and their families.

On January 14th, 2016, in an attempt to disband and bust the unionized workers of Brod Kitchen-- formerly Hot & Crusty Bakery--on 63rd Street and 2nd avenue, the owners suddenly announced that they would shut down the unionized bakery/restaurant permanently, THE FOLLOWING DAY. This highly politicized move was made the day before Union negotiations for the worker’s second contract began.

The Hot & Crusty Workers Association (HCWA) represents primarily immigrant and African American workers, and the owners’ actions can only be interpreted as being racist, classist and heartless. Brod Kitchen owners have opened a second location at 31st and 4th street in an attempt to have a non-unionized staff.
19 workers are out of a job within 30 days.

We need your help to stop this attack on workers’ rights here in New York City.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Protesters from a pro-immigrant rights coalition group last Friday held a rally in New York City airing their grievances against the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that kicked off last week in response to orders from the Obama administration.

Since the beginning of the year, the National Homeland Security has announced that it will be deporting and detaining undocumented immigrants in the U.S. starting this month where already121 immigrants mostly from North Carolina, Georgia and Texas were raided and detained.

The coalition group, ICE-Free NYC, according to Latino Rebels, were marching outside an immigration court in lower Manhattan calling out the recent deportation raids made by the Obama administration. Meanwhile, as hundreds of protesters joined, seven people were reportedly arrested when they blocked the corner of Varick Street and West Houston Street, Waging Nonviolence reports.[...]

Monday, January 18, 2016

At the end of December, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would being rounding up Central American immigrants for deportation. This past weekend, the raids began, with parents and children being detained in military-style operations in several southern and border states. Fear has spread through immigrant communities around the country.

As a professor of migration studies at Stony Brook University who has researched consequences of immigration policies for over a decade, I have followed news of this initiative closely. But I am also an Anglo mom of two on Long Island, in a town with sizeable communities of Latino immigrants, many of them from Central America. I speak Spanish, so I talk with Latino immigrants, I listen, I ask. And this is what fear looks like in my town.

Sunday afternoon, my kids were playing with some kids in the community, blowing off end-of-holiday break steam. Suddenly, one boy said to me, "Miss Nancy, did you hear that they are stopping people on the streets, and taking them away? Whole families. My mom was crying, she's so scared."[...]

Sunday, January 17, 2016

You cannot fix what is rotten to the core. The system is not broken—it was designed this way.

By Carlos García, Latino RebelsDecember 31, 2015

In 2016, we need to stop leaving people behind. It doesn’t serve our movement to use corrupt messaging that serves the needs of those in power. It divides our community into those who are deserving and those who are not and throws other oppressed communities under the bus.

It’s time for us to step up our words and our actions and drop these phrases from our own movements. Let’s end the divide-and-conquer tactics of the state and commit to liberation for all of our people.[...]

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

"...[W]hen there’s terror in a place like Guatemala, people flee. They come to the U.S. That’s where a lot of the undocumented immigrants originated from. And then Americans complain. Well, you know, if you go and burn down your neighbor’s house, don’t complain when, as they run from the flames, they come onto your lawn." --Allan Nairn

Democracy Now!January 8, 2016

In a stunning development, Guatemalan police have arrested 18 ex-military leaders on charges of committing crimes against humanity during the decades-long, U.S.-backed dirty war against Guatemala’s indigenous communities. The ex-military leaders face charges of ordering massacres and forced disappearances during the conflict, which led to perhaps a quarter-million deaths. Many of the arrested former military leaders were backed by the United States, including Manuel Benedicto Lucas García, who had worked closely with U.S. military officials to develop a system of attacking the highlands where Guatemala’s indigenous Mayan communities reside. The system involved decapitating and crucifying people. We speak to investigative journalist and activist Allan Nairn.

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to stunning developments in Guatemala, where this week police have arrested 18 ex-military leaders on charges of committing crimes against humanity during the decades-long, U.S.-backed dirty war against Guatemala’s indigenous communities. The ex-military leaders face charges of ordering massacres and forced disappearances, which led to perhaps a quarter of a million deaths. Many of the arrested former military leaders were backed by the United States, including Manuel Benedicto Lucas García, who had worked closely with U.S. military officials to develop a system of attacking the highlands where Guatemala’s indigenous Mayan communities reside. The system involved decapitating and crucifying people. Lucas is a former army chief of staff and the brother of the ex-dictator, General Fernando Romeo Lucas García. Speaking Wednesday, he defended himself against the charges.[...]

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

"...[T]he U.S. needs to genuinely address the root causes of Central American migration. To do so requires policy makers to take a hard look at existing U.S. policies toward the region..."

Statement from U.S. and Central American Groups Working on Human Rights, Immigrant Rights, Women’s Rights, U.S. Foreign Policy and Latin America SolidarityJanuary 8, 2016

Over the last few days, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been rounding up and deporting dozens of members of Central American families seeking refuge from extreme violence and dire economic conditions in their communities of origin. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has described the move as part of an effort to “secure” the U.S. border and has announced that “additional enforcement operations such as these will continue to occur as appropriate.”

These raids are the latest chapter of what can only be described as a prolonged U.S. government war on migrant families, and specifically those coming from the most dangerous and economically deprived parts of Central America.

Following the public outcry generated by the mass detention of child migrants from Central America during the summer of 2014, the U.S. government enlisted Mexico’s security forces to carry out the dirty work of aggressively apprehending and repatriating migrants fleeing rampant violence and poverty in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador (collectively referred to as the “Northern Triangle”). With promises of economic assistance, the U.S. then successfully lobbied Northern Triangle governments to use their security forces to further suppress migration towards the United States.[...]

Brooklyn car-wash worker Angel Rebolledo and Bronx fast-food employee Flavia Cabral work in jobs and neighborhoods that are miles apart, but they have remarkably similar stories to tell.

Rebolledo, a 55-year-old Mexican immigrant, was earning $600 a week to work 90 hours at the Vegas Auto Spa car wash in 2013 when he realized that he could not make ends meet and had to take a stand.

Rebolledo was getting constant nosebleeds from the harsh acids used to wash the grime off the vehicles. Along with his fellow “car washeros,” as they became known, Rebolledo joined a grassroots campaign that pushed for legislation to regulate the troubled car-wash industry. In June, the carwasheros celebrated the passage of New York’s first Car Wash Accountability Act, which among other provisions protects car-wash workers from wage theft.

Across town in the Bronx, 53-year-old Dominican immigrant Flavia Cabral had also reached a breaking point. Juggling two minimum-wage jobs, one at a fast-food restaurant and the other at a shipping company, Cabral was more worried about sustaining her family on $8.75 an hour than she was about her painful deep-fryer and oven burns. Like the carwasheros, Cabral and her fellow fast-food workers organized to take a stand. The upshot was that in September, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo approved a proposal by the state’s labor commissioner to raise fast-food workers’ pay to $15 an hour.[...]

Sunday, January 10, 2016

The White House rang in the New Year by slamming the gates on refugee families seeking sanctuary. Immigration and Customs Enforcementm (ICE) announced quietly, in the midst of the holiday break, that it would begin raiding and deporting Central American families who have failed to qualify for asylum. Their impending exile, according to ICE, is a matter of upholding rule of law, apparently to make it clear that the United States takes border control seriously and seeks to somehow deter mass migration.

The law the Obama administration is following, immigrant advocates say, runs counter to the higher mandate the White House should be abiding by. International humanitarian law actually dictates that these desperate parents and children be granted protection from the persecution and violence they have fled in their home countries.[...]

Sunday, January 3, 2016

The detentions of at least 11 families across the country marked the first day of an effort by the government to find and deport Central American migrants who sought refuge in the U.S. and stayed illegally, immigrant advocates said Saturday.

Unlike a string of immigration raids in the mid-2000s, agents do not plan to conduct workplace raids or other mass enforcement actions, but will instead target addresses for families with deportation orders.

In Norcross, Ga., on Saturday, Joanna Gutierrez said her niece and niece's 9-year-old son were taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who arrived in an unmarked car and presented Gutierrez with a warrant for a man she didn't know.

Gutierrez says she told the agents they needed a warrant to enter her home. They told her they didn't, she says, and walked inside, checking every room in the house and waking her children. "They were shaking from fear," Gutierrez said of the children in a phone interview Saturday night.[...]

About The Politics of Immigration

The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers is a book that goes beyond soundbites to tackle concerns about immigration in straightforward language and an accessible question-and-answer format. For immigrants and supporters, the book is a useful tool to confront stereotypes and disinformation. For those who are undecided about immigration, it lays out the facts and clear reasoning they need to develop an informed opinion. Ideal for classroom use, the updated and expanded 2017 edition provides a succinct overview of U.S. immigration history, policy, and practice, with detailed notes guiding readers toward further exploration.
Guskin and Wilson have written extensively on immigration and facilitated dozens of dialogues on the topic with students, community activists, congregations, and other public audiences. To arrange a dialogue or for more information, contact them at thepoliticsofimmigration@gmail.com.
To stay in the loop on author events and related resources, follow the book on Twitter (@Immigration_QA) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ImmigrationQA/).